Meh the Metro apps have been hit or miss for me, found a few nice ones, others not so much. (Which is true regardless of the platform I guess.) Ran into a few quirky ones. Some are just inconsistent as hell; for example in some Metro apps I can scroll sideways with the mouse wheel. Others, I can't... irritating. Happens vertically too; have Tweetro for example running in a column on the side of the screen for a list view, can't seem to scroll that one with a wheel either.. big WTF there. As far as usability goes, a lot of it had to just do with getting used to it, learning how to resize Metro apps and move them, the new hotkeys, a few things that weren't blatantly obvious, etc. I think the platform itself is ok, just a bit immature yet, never mind developers are still fairly new raw with it. Performance wise again it's hit or miss, depends on the program. I think over time it'll improve a lot, both with some under-the-hood improvements from Microsoft (it is a first version after all) and from developers themselves, but right now it's fairly hit or miss. Kind of reminds me of a Linux desktop in a way.. bits of sheer brilliance sprinkled with a dash of utter stupidity in random places just to make things irritating. (And that's not a bash a Linux, rather fond of that OS too.)

That said, Windows 8 itself (the "regular" bits) has been running very well for me. Have been using the Windows 7 "hybrid shell" trick as I really don't find myself using the Metro stuff much.. I can deal with the start screen (mostly.. it needs work too) but meh, if I'm not using the Metro stuff may as well save a little memory. Run just as fast as 7, often times faster depending on the scenario. Has been quite stable, so far I have yet to find anything that doesn't run with it or get any crashes, well on the non-Metro side anyway, had a few apps that kersploded. Overall I've been finding it very good under the hood.. just needs a bit work on the front end. That and a better theme.. eesh hurry up third party modders.

no harm done mate but you too should try and empathyze with the "other side": us win8 users (not de facto fanboys altough i admit i am an ms-fanboy) continually need to take the crap (some times it is REALLY just crap) from the abovementioned people, many of them never used the thing (i don't say never will 'cos in the minute COD or BF do 1FPS better on Win8 piratebay will overload) but bash it anyway - and the real LOL is that i heard this music many times with idiocy like the scrapping of classic theme, the scrapping of classic start menu, file indexing, superfetch, aero itself (enter aero and queue the ****storm of "eyecandy BS", exit aero and queue the ****storm of "looks like win1.0 lolz") and countless more

that's why i rarely concern myself with topics like this, the one and only reason i posted 'cos the OP was >wrong< about backgroud startup and switching between apps (not saying he's lying but if Win8 behaves this way on his rig it is not normal)

what do you mean when referring to "desktop counterparts"? websites or software? i of course use outlook, without it i would be half dead half stupid but i wouldn't count it as a "counterpart" for mail app - the latter is just an easy to use and finger friendly email client, sorta like outlook.com/email but on your start screen (what plus you get are the notifications and of course you can add multiple accounts)

weather, i find easier to look at a tile than go to a website - and for forecasts, the display of information is better in the application than on most websites i've seen

people, well... i think it's a great opportunity but yet a bit awkward to use, slow and not a bit like WP's people hub; but the notification section is great and it has potential, we'll see

anyway as i said earlier most of the apps are in need of at least one major update for performance and features but i'm pretty confident that we'll see quite a few of those till the 26th

Well, yeah, Mail is not even near the features and functionality of Outlook, yet still it's slower, less responsive, and buggy from my experience.

For Weather, I'd say most of the desktop weather widgets out there load faster and more responsive.

For the record, I really like Windows 8 in general, I like the faster system startup and shutdown, like the more streamlined look, like the smoother feel of the UI, like the more responsive operations in the desktop environment, and IE10 in Windows 8 is the first nicely usable IE in a long time that doesn't instantly drive me to install Opera and Chrome. However most of the Metro apps are really useless and user-unfriendly at this time IMO, I hope they can really work some magic and turn that around. Ot maybe some better driver support if that's the main issue.

On another note, apart from some bad performance issues and weirdness of the Metro apps, I think the current design doesn't really make the Start Screen and Metro apps integrate with the desktop environment well, which leads to UX issues. Many times when I try to click on the menu button of Opera or Firefox browsers, or the File menu of maximized programs, I trigger a Metro app switch instead. And as the Metro app switching and desktop app switching are located at different areas of the screen, I think it's easy to get them mixed up at times, like looking at the left side bar for switching into a desktop app, or instinctually moving the mouse pointer to the taskbar when I actually think of switching into a Metro app.

I agree the apps are mostly awful except for maybe a few games. I still like Windows 8 but don't use metro much at all because of this.

The biggest problem is how slow they are and makes them all feel awful no matter what. There is no excuse for metro apps to be so much slower than desktop apps if that's what they're supposed to replace.

I love Windows 8 and I'll defend it if the bashing doesn't have a point but since your criticism is directed to the how bad the Metro apps are (and not just the typical "omg! I'm forced to use the Metro apps!"), then I agree. This has always been my stand when it comes to Metro apps: if it isn't as good as its desktop counterparts, then there's no reason for me to use it. Mail app does not take as long as yours to open but outlook.com on the web is just as snappy. Most apps are also crappy, tbh. The only ones I use are News applications for the live tiles, and TrackSeries (and TrackSeries, as much as I love it, isn't intuitive as well). OneNote MX is good, but it can't even match Evernote on desktop.

Yup, as the couple Windows 8 tablets we are provided with are downright awful devices. With Atom CPUs, little disk space, and low quality touch-screens. Oh well they are just given to us to do some software UI tests, so they does do their intended work.